Orszag again

President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday nominated Peter Orszag to head the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is the president’s chief number-crunching department.

As OMB director, Orszag, 40, would prepare the president’s federal budget proposals for Congress and analyze the effectiveness of government programs and policies, as well as have a big role in determining funding priorities for federal dollars.
Orszag has also been a frank voice on the growth in the country’s deficit and the shortfalls in the Social Security and Medicare programs.

“The nation is on an unsustainable fiscal course,” Orszag said in September, before the Treasury and Federal Reserve committed over a trillion dollars to stem the credit crisis, at least some of which the government is expected to make back over time.